Category: Drawdown Solutions

  • The Nutrient Deficiency Myth, Debunked: What a Vegan Diet Really Provides

    Have you ever associated going vegan with the fear of missing out on vital nutrients? You’re not alone—this myth has been circulating for years. But science, insights into propaganda used by the meat industry, and my personal journey—tell a very different story.

    Photo by Samuel Girven on Unsplash

    Typical American diets are often heavy in processed meats and low in fiber. In contrast, vegans get significantly more micronutrients like fiber, vitamins C and E, and minerals such as magnesium. These nutrients are vital in supporting heart health, immune function, and overall wellness. Contrary to popular belief, plant-based eaters consistently meet or exceed recommended protein intakes through legumes, tofu, tempeh, nuts, seeds, and whole grains. With variety, all essential amino acids are covered.

    Meanwhile, omnivorous diets can ironically lack many of these key micronutrients, despite providing ample protein and calories.

    Since I began pursuing strength training and body composition goals on a vegan diet—alongside other active hobbies like dancing and hiking—I’ve experienced firsthand how plant-based nutrition fuels athletic performance and aesthetic goals.

    My personal experience reflects what the science shows: a well-planned vegan diet provides all the essential nutrients needed for muscle growth, sustained energy, and recovery.

    What’s the Difference Between Micronutrients and Macronutrients?

    Understanding nutrition is like maintaining a car—you need both fuel and sparts to keep it running.

    Macronutrients are your fuel: carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. Carbs provide quick energy, proteins build and repair tissue, and fats store energy and support vital functions.

    Micronutrients—vitamins and minerals—are like the spark plugs and wiring. You need them in small amounts, but they’re essential for metabolism, immunity, brain function, and bone health. Without them, even the best “fuel” can’t keep the system running smoothly.

    How Vegan Diets Boost Health

    A vegan diet centered around whole foods like fruits, vegetables, grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds is naturally packed with essential micronutrients. These include vitamins C and E, magnesium, potassium, zinc, copper, and antioxidants that help your body run clean and efficiently.

    Collagen Production

    Many of these nutrients support collagen production, which maintains healthy skin, joints, and connective tissue. Vitamin C stabilizes collagen fibers, zinc and copper support its synthesis, and vitamins A and E aid in cell renewal and protect skin structures. This profile not only bolsters heart health and digestion but also helps keep skin strong and youthful.

    Muscle Growth and Function

    Micronutrients play crucial roles in muscle function. Calcium triggers muscle contractions, potassium helps muscles relax and prevents cramps, and magnesium supports energy metabolism.

    Great plant-based sources include:

    • Calcium: fortified plant milks, tofu, kale, bok choy
    • Potassium: bananas, sweet potatoes, spinach, avocados
    • Magnesium: almonds, cashews, pumpkin seeds, whole grains, leafy greens

    Iron and B vitamins (B1, B6, B12, folate) are essential for delivering oxygen and energy to muscles. Iron transports oxygen, while B vitamins convert food into energy. Find these in lentils, chickpeas, quinoa, spinach, pumpkin seeds, whole grains, legumes, nutritional yeast, and dark leafy greens.

    Vitamins C and E and minerals like zinc aid post-exercise recovery and reduce oxidative stress. Sources include citrus fruits, strawberries, bell peppers, broccoli (for C), nuts, seeds, spinach (for E), and beans, lentils, and seeds (for zinc).

    Vitamin D and zinc also support immune health and hormonal balance—key for consistent training and recovery. Vitamin D can be found in fortified plant milks, sun-exposed mushrooms, and supplements as needed.

    In my experience, I’ve had more energy to pursue multiple sports—including weightlifting, dance, and hiking—on a plant-based diet than I did on an omnivorous one. Although I tracked my macronutrients more rigorously on an omnivorous diet, I’ve found it easier to reach my strength, stamina, and aesthetic goals by prioritizing nutrient-dense, plant-based foods. I attribute this to getting adequate macronutrients alongside a significantly higher intake of micronutrients. The boost in vitamins and minerals has also enhanced my focus throughout the day.

    What About B12?

    Contrary to popular belief, meat itself does not naturally contain high levels of B vitamins; rather, it’s produced by microbes and added to animal feed in industrial farming. This means most people consuming meat get B12 that was supplemented earlier in the food chain.

    Fortified foods such as nutritional yeast provide a direct, reliable source for vegans.

    Increased Immunity

    Since going vegan, I rarely get sick and recover quickly when I do. I feel more energized and no longer experience the frequent colds I used to. Whether it’s due to increased vitamin C, zinc, antioxidants, or overall nutrient density, the shift has been profound.

    And the data backs it up: A 2021 study in BMJ Nutrition, Prevention & Health found that people on plant-based diets had a 73% lower risk of moderate-to-severe COVID-19. Researchers attributed this to higher intakes of vitamins, antioxidants, and fiber, which reduce inflammation and boost immune defenses.

    How Meat Industry Propaganda Fuels Nutrient Myths and Greenwashing

    The enduring myth that vegan diets are nutritionally insufficient is not merely a misunderstanding—it is actively propagated and reinforced by coordinated marketing and lobbying campaigns funded by the meat industry.

    This industry exploits a fundamental human instinct: the desire to protect our health and well-being.

    By weaponizing legitimate health concerns, the meat sector promotes the narrative that meat is essential for strength, vitality, and overall wellness.

    Each year, the meat industry deploys powerful advertisements that positions meat as the primary or exclusive source of vital nutrients such as protein and B vitamins. These campaigns use cultural symbols, linking meat consumption with masculinity, patriotism, tradition, and cultural identity.

    Ironically, many nutrients long attributed to meat actually come from supplements administered to animals before slaughter, rather than naturally occurring in the meat itself—as noted above regarding vitamin B12.

    Marketing tactics target young demographics and schools by funding educational materials that vilify plant-based alternatives as unnatural or overly processed.

    Simultaneously, the industry promotes “net zero” sustainability pledges that omit critical emissions sources like deforestation linked to feed crop production, misleading the public regarding meat’s true environmental costs.

    Beyond traditional advertisements, the meat industry has invested tens of millions of dollars into orchestrated misinformation and disinformation campaigns designed to obstruct transitions toward plant-based diets and challenge studies advocating for reduced meat consumption for human and planetary health. This includes providing funding to scholars, research centers, and public relations firms that produce and disseminate messaging aimed at undermining scientific consensus on the environmental and health impacts of meat consumption. For instance, the University of California Davis’s CLEAR Center has received nearly $12.5 million in meat industry funding to challenge studies advocating for reduced meat consumption and to lead campaigns such as #yes2meat.

    In 2023 alone, the U.S. meat industry spent over $10 million on political contributions and lobbying. For example, Tyson Foods spent about $1.67 million on federal lobbying in the 2023-2024 cycle; WH Group spent $1.04 million; JBS, $440,000; and the North American Meat Institute, $186,767.

    This intensified financial clout coincides with rising scrutiny of meat’s environmental and health impacts, as well as a cultural surge in traditional norms linking meat and dairy consumption to masculinity.

    These campaigns create confusion. Many people wrongly believe beef is sustainable through inaccurate sustainability pledges and that plant-based diets are nutritionally lacking. Such misinformation is used to protect industry profits and delay the urgently needed policy reforms to reduce emissions and safeguard public health.

    Recognizing this complex propaganda ecosystem is essential to understanding why nutrient deficiency myths persist and empowers people to make informed, health-conscious, and sustainable choices.

    Vegan Diets Are Better for the Planet—And That Supports Our Health

    Eating plant-based doesn’t just benefit your body—it helps regenerate the systems that sustain all life on Earth. Compared to animal-heavy diets, plant-based eating uses far less land, water, and energy while slashing greenhouse gas emissions.

    Studies from  Oxford and Harvard show that shifting to plant-based diets can reduce environmental impact by up to 75%, while also lowering risks for heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and some cancers.

    This shift reduces environmental pressures and restores ecosystems, which in turn provide cleaner air, purer water, and greater climate stability—directly benefiting human health.

    It’s a powerful feedback loop: eating plants helps protect ecosystems, and thriving ecosystems support human health in return.

    How Plant-Based Diets Restore Natural Systems

    • Water Cycle Support: Switching to plant-based diets could significantly decrease water use on a global scale. When less water is needed for crops, and less pollution enters rivers, this allows aquifers to recharge, rivers to flow, and ecosystems to recover.
    • Carbon Cycle and Climate Regulation: Vegan diets could reduce food-related emissions by up to 86% by retiring grazing land and monoculture feed crops to make space for forests and grasslands to regrow. This helps to improve air quality and restore carbon sinks.
    • Healthy Ecosystems = Healthy Humans: Intact ecosystems filter air and water, regulate temperature, prevent erosion, pollinate crops, and buffer natural disasters. These services reduce disease, support food security, and strengthen community resilience.

    Fuel Your Body and the Planet with Plants

    Vegan diets deliver both the robust fuel (macronutrients) and essential parts (micronutrients) your body needs—while caring for the Earth. They bust the nutrient deficiency myth by offering a rich spectrum of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants to support muscle performance, collagen production, immunity, and vitality.

    By choosing plants, you’re efficiently fueling your body, fine-tuning your health, and creating a better world for everyone. I’ve felt this transformation in my own energy, immunity, and strength—and science backs it up.

  • The Illusion of Green Growth: Why Degrowth is a Necessary Path to Sustainability

    Many climate scientists, environmental activists, and researchers, including myself, now reject green growth models, not because of an opposition to progress or innovation, but because the promises of “green growth” in already high-income countries are fundamentally incompatible with the scale of ecological and social challenges present across the globe.

    This preference toward degrowth is rooted in mounting scientific evidence, supported by a recent groundbreaking review published in Lancet Planetary Health titled “Post-growth: the science of wellbeing within planetary boundaries,” which challenges the assumption that economic growth is necessary or even desirable for societal progress.

    Photo by Shelley Johnson on Unsplash

    A central argument made by the authors is that the dominant narrative, which claims technological innovation and efficiency will allow for continued economic growth while reducing environmental harm, is not supported by the data. Efficiency improvements are consistently outpaced by the scale and speed of economic expansion, leading to increased resource consumption, pollution, and waste—a phenomenon known as the “rebound effect.” This effect directly undermines the idea that growth can be decoupled from environmental harm.

    The belief that technological solutions alone can address today’s ecological crises exposes the use of binary thinking to address a multifaceted problem. This technological optimism can distract from the deeper, systemic changes needed to address how societies produce, consume, and define prosperity. Overreliance on technological solutions risks obscuring the fundamental drivers of climate change and social inequality. While technological shifts and innovation will play a role, it cannot substitute for the deeper structural changes needed to address how societies produce, consume, and define prosperity.

    Research shows that market-driven approaches and the current economic system delay effective climate action by hindering the deployment of transformative technologies. Many promising climate innovations struggle to secure funding or scale because profit-driven systems tend to prioritize short-term returns over long-term societal and environmental benefits. Ironically, green growth models also rely on rapid technological deployment as a climate solution, while many proposed solutions are either unproven at scale or insufficient to address the magnitude of the problems.

    Moreover, renewable energy and other sustainable technologies are not without environmental and social costs. The extraction of minerals essential for batteries and electronics, such as cobalt and lithium, is frequently linked to environmental degradation and human rights violations. This is not to suggest that clean energy should be dismissed, but rather that its deployment must be accompanied by systemic reforms. Without broader economic and policy changes, such technologies risk perpetuating existing patterns of overconsumption, social inequalities and human rights violations.

    Crucially, the pursuit of endless economic growth is fundamentally incompatible with the Earth’s ecological boundaries. Humanity has already exceeded six of nine planetary boundaries, threatening the stability of Earth’s life-support systems. The drive for economic expansion, especially in high-income countries, is largely responsible for this overshoot, often achieved at the expense of labor and resources in lower-income nations. High-income countries, in particular, have a disproportionate impact on global emissions and resource use, and their current levels of consumption are unsustainable. If these consumption patterns persist, they are likely to precipitate ecosystem collapse and irreversible climate impacts across the globe. To avert ecological catastrophe and biodiversity loss, high-income countries must significantly reduce their material and energy use.

    Green growth strategies tend to prioritize harm reduction through technological innovation and decarbonization, while neglecting the restorative practices needed to regenerate ecosystems.Even when labeled as “green,” economic growth models frequently fail to deliver meaningful social or ecological outcomes due to the fact that market-driven interventions often neglect ecosystem restoration that is viewed as “non-profitable”. A shift in priorities is needed—from GDP growth to enhancing human well-being, equity, and ecological regeneration.

    True sustainability requires a deliberate reduction in material throughput, regeneration of depleted ecosystems, and advancement of social equity.  It is not enough to simply shift to “greener” forms of production and consumption if they still enable the exploitation and oppression of nature and non-dominant groups.

    As highlighted in recent research published in The Lancet Planetary Health, degrowth offers a scientifically grounded pathway to remain within planetary boundaries while improving health and well-being (Beyer et al., 2024). By intentionally reducing overall consumption and production—particularly in high-income countries—and reorienting economies toward equity, social cohesion, and ecological restoration, we can address the root causes of environmental degradation and social inequality.

    The Lancet article emphasizes that degrowth is not about austerity or deprivation, but about prioritizing human flourishing, reducing unnecessary work and consumption, and ensuring that everyone’s basic needs are met. This approach has the potential to lower pollution, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and restore ecosystems, while also improving life satisfaction, reducing stress, and strengthening community ties.

    These findings point the way toward a healthier planet, fairer societies, and a higher quality of life for all—achieved not through endless economic expansion, but through a fundamental transformation of our values, priorities, and systems. It’s time to embrace a new vision of progress—one rooted in ecological balance, equity, and genuine well-being.

  • Rejecting Speciesism and Embracing the Animal Sentience Revolution

    Since the 1990s, evidence supporting animal sentience has increased tenfold, demonstrating that animals possess the capacity for subjective experiences like pleasure and pain—states previously believed beyond their reach. This surge in evidence has amplified the animal rights movement, spotlighting the injustices prevalent in animal agriculture, research, testing, and challenging normalized societal views of animals.

    Photo by Caroline S.

    A pivotal moment in this revolution was the establishment of Animal Sentience in 2015. This academic journal became the first to exclusively study the capacity of nonhuman animals to feel and think. By integrating ethics, neuroscience, animal behavior, and welfare science, Animal Sentience has provided a centralized, peer-reviewed platform for interdisciplinary research, marking formal recognition of animal sentience as a legitimate scientific field.

    This milestone followed the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness (2012), which affirmed that many nonhuman animals possess neurological substrates for consciousness.

    By legitimizing research on  subjective experiences in animals, Animal Sentience challenged behaviorist paradigms that had dominated much of the 20th century.

    The journal’s influence extends to policy, with its research supporting legal protections for species like cephalopods and decapods in the EU and UK. The incorporation of animal sentience into UK law through the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022 demonstrates growing societal acknowledgment of animals’ capacity for suffering, supporting calls to end practices like factory farming and animal testing.

    While these legal protections have helped improve animal welfare and awareness of animal rights, there is still much work to be done to implement the findings of the animal sentience revolution into industry and society.

    Moreover, Animal Sentience has strengthened ethical arguments against practices like factory farming and animal research by highlighting evidence of sentience across diverse taxa.

    In essence, Animal Sentience has played a critical role in advancing scientific understanding, fostered interdisciplinary collaboration, influenced policy changes, and shifted societal attitudes toward recognizing animals as sentient beings deserving moral consideration.

    Animal Sentience helped pave the way for future landmarks in the animal rights movement, such as the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness (2024) and the Animal Sentient Precautionary Principle (ASENT) Project (2019-2024).

    The New York Declaration challenges paradigms in ethics, neuroscience, and societal norms. It explicitly rejects the assumption that consciousness requires human-like brain structures and the idea of human exceptionalism in understanding animal consciousness.

    As the Declaration states, “The architecture for consciousness in other animals may look completely different than in humans… It is irresponsible to ignore [this] in decisions affecting animals.”

    By challenging anthropocentric biases and recognizing consciousness as a trait shared across diverse species with varying neural architectures, the New York Declaration provides a framework for integrating scientific findings into ethical decision-making, urging society to reevaluate its treatment of animals in agriculture, research, and other industries.

    The declaration marks a pivotal moment in the science of animal minds by combining empirical evidence with moral responsibility, pushing for systemic changes in how humans interact with nonhuman animals.

    It also emphasizes that absolute certainty about consciousness is not required to take ethical precautions, advocating instead for a precautionary principle in decision-making.

    If there is even a realistic possibility that an animal can suffer or experience harm, policymakers should consider this when crafting laws and regulations. By assuming consciousness, we can create better animal welfare practices and ensure that no sentient beings are harmed.

    If consciousness isn’t human-specific, speciesist hierarchies (e.g., prioritizing mammals over fish) become untenable. This realization highlights the fact that speciesism is a construct, and thus our understanding of speciesism is shaped by human perception and cultural systems, rather than being an objective, universally fixed reality. 

    Building on this foundation, the ASENT Project (2019-2024) has challenged binary classifications of sentience by proposing a multidimensional framework that considers valence (pleasure/pain), arousal (intensity), self-awareness, and social awareness across species.

    By rejecting binary thinking, ASENT helps us understand that sentience isn’t one-size-fits-all. It’s not just about whether an animal can feel pain – it’s also about how deeply they experience the world around them. Are they self-aware? Can they form social bonds? And what’s the emotional intensity behind their experiences?

    ASENT’s spectrum model widens our definition of sentience, allowing for what is classically considered partial evidence (e.g., chickens showing empathy) to warrant ethical safeguards.

    The ASENT framework emphasizes taking preventative action when there is a threat of harm by stating that “Uncertainty about sentience does not justify inaction.”

    These milestones highlight a critical point: sentience should not be a prerequisite for welfare.

    Because our understanding of sentience is largely based on the human experience, there is a high likelihood that animal consciousness differs from our own in ways we may not fully comprehend, which is further complicated by humans’ incomplete understanding of our own species’ consciousness.

    Animals that have not been proven sentient are labeled as non-sentient until proven otherwise, leading to the risk of inflicting harm on sentient beings.

    As science evolves, more species are recognized as sentient, underscoring the need to assume sentience until proven otherwise and to grant welfare to all species based on their intrinsic value. The intrinsic value of animals refers to the idea that animals have inherent worth, independent of their usefulness or value to humans, meaning their lives are valuable in and of themselves. 

    The evolving landscape of animal sentience science is highlighted by groundbreaking research from 2023 which found that bees have emotions, can plan and imagine, and recognize themselves as unique entities, when it was once thought that all insects, including bees, were mere automatons.

    Additionally, breakthroughs in neuroscience and ethology show that animals previously thought incapable of feeling pain—such as crustaceans and cephalopods—are indeed sentient. This evidence dismantles arguments justifying their use in food and research industries and further supports the argument to assume consciousness until proven otherwise.

    The utilitarian classifications of living organisms used in the speciesist hierarchy lays the foundation for humans to justify inflicting harm on each other based on perceived traits of moral or performance superiority.

    Speciesism places Homo sapiens at the top of a hierarchy that is used to justify sacrificing other animals. Harmful practices and ideas about animals that are deprioritized in the speciesist hierarchy are used to rationalize colonial practices and violence towards groups of people.

    Speciesism allows certain animals to be exploited and treated as commodities to accommodate human needs and desires, while other animals with the same capacity to experience emotion can be considered family.

    In 1999, the Treaty of Amsterdam went into force, granting animals official recognition as sentient beings in the EU, which demonstrates widespread acceptance of animal sentience. However, the practices used in animal agriculture and animal testing disregard the fact that animals such as cows, pigs, chickens, and rats are capable of experiencing a significant range of emotions, including fear, stress, pain, social bonds, joy, empathy and affection. This juxtaposition highlights a significant level of cognitive dissonance associated with the production and consumption of animal products as well as products tested on animals.  

    Despite our knowledge of their ability to experience subjective states, chickens, pigs, and cows are viewed as commodities in society, raised simply for consumption without deliberation on their wellbeing. 

    In industrialized agriculture, these animals are confined in cramped, unsanitary conditions to maximize production, leading to suffering and disease. Calves are separated from their mothers within a few hours of birth and male piglets are castrated without anesthesia. However, the normalization of speciesism in society enables people to turn a blind eye to the 10 billion animals that are killed on factory farms in the USA annually and their suffering.

    Humans must challenge our idea of superiority in the animal kingdom, recognizing that we are animals too. It is unjust to engage with practices such as laboratory testing, animal agriculture, and the destruction of natural habitats due to the distress and pain these practices inflict on innocent, sentient beings in addition to the harm they inflict on the Earth.

    The U.S. animal agriculture system inflicts unfathomable suffering on sentient beings while pushing Earth’s systems toward irreversible tipping points. As animal agriculture severely threatens several planetary boundaries, including climate change (release of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses), biogeochemical flows (nitrogen and phosphorus), land-system change, freshwater use, and biosphere integrity (the loss of biodiversity).

    Vegan ethics align with the scientific consensus on animal consciousness and the urgency of staying within planetary boundaries.

    The convergence of animal sentience science, climate urgency, and planetary boundary breaches creates a compelling ethical and ecological case for transitioning to veganism in the U.S. Here’s how these elements interconnect:

    Rejecting speciesism is not only a moral choice but also crucial for the planet’s survival.

    Developments in animal sentience science confirm that animals experience subjective states such as pain, fear, empathy, and pleasure, making their exploitation morally indefensible.

    Sentience-based ethics challenge speciesism by dismantling the hierarchy that places human interests above those of non-human animals.

    Evidence of animal cognition, such as playful behaviors in bees and problem-solving in octopuses, underscores the ability of science to evolve overtime and the need to assume consciousness in order to ensure that no sentient beings are harmed.

    These scientific advancements strengthen the moral argument for veganism by revealing the inherent suffering and exploitation in animal agriculture, advocating for systemic change in research, societal norms, and practices. Moreover, they challenge anthropocentrism by showing that consciousness is not uniquely human nor reliant on familiar neural structures. We must recognize that sentience is a spectrum with diverse evolutionary origins, and revise animal welfare laws, research ethics, food systems, and our relationship with nonhuman life.